I'm afraid I'm going to name drop again! Not that I've been rubbing shoulders with anyone like Sir Cliff Richard again. Well, not recently, at least…

In fact, I was clearing out the junk that always seems to accumulate in our spare room, because an old friend Anne Marie and her teenage daughter Hannah are travelling from Boston, USA to spend Easter with us.

Hannah has never been to Britain and is desperate to visit London, so we are giving them a base while they explore. They are also taking Eurostar to Paris for a couple of days, so let's hope the glorious weather that I'm writing this in continues for them (and us!).

Anyway, to get back to the point. I was sorting through some boxes full of 'stuff' and found some old photos. One took me way back to 1980, the year after I won the Modern Pentathlon World Championships.

I was invited to be a contestant on A Question of Sport and was delighted to have the gorgeous, smiley Emlyn Hughes as my captain. He was a lovely man – my dad was really impressed when he came and picked me up from our house to drive me to the studios. So was my older brother, a passionate Liverpool fan (actually, more jealous than impressed!).

It was really the start of my television career as sometime later, the same producers asked me whether I'd be interested in presenting a children's sports programme called Stopwatch. I was in the middle of studying for a science degree, and had planned to take an MSc., but when I finished university I took the plunge into live television and here I am over thirty years later!

I was also delighted to find the other photo that I've posted here – meeting Eric Morecambe was a real treat. The Morecambe & Wise Show was essential viewing during my youth and he was such a funny man. We were both working at an exhibition and I remember him saying how he didn't want to be photographed next to me, so he put his hand in front of my face!

I'm so lucky to have met two such iconic men, neither with us today. I could have spent ages looking through the box, and I will share some more photos with you soon. But I have to go now – I've been writing this in a taxi on my way to Heathrow airport as part of a special mission for QVC, and we've just arrived.

I won't say where I'm going now – for that information you'll have to watch this space!

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